Adelene Perkins, CEO of Infinity Pharmaceuticals, said the company hopes to develop a drug for blood cancers that enables patients to live a normal life span, much like HIV patients can with modern drugs.

One of the most talked-about presentations scheduled for next week’s annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology is Infinity Pharmaceuticals’ potential treatment for blood cancers. Investor anticipation ahead of the event has led to some heavy fluctuations in the company’s stock, which at roughly $25 a share is down about 36 percent this month alone.

ASCO is among the largest and most important annual conferences for biotechs developing cancer drugs. Its prominence as a showcase for groundbreaking cancer research was solidified several years ago after the discovery of the phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K) signaling pathway, considered a potential new way to attack cancer cells without hurting healthy ones.

Cambridge-based Infinity (Nasdaq: INFI) is at the forefront of that research, and is specifically targeting leukemia and lymphoma largely because it’s easy to measure the effects of PI3K inhibitors in those types of cancers.

The only current treatment for all kinds of blood cancers is chemotherapy, which is non-targeted and kills healthy as well as disease-ridden cells. Adelene Perkins, CEO of Infinity, says there’s a lot of interest in an oral drug that targets blood cancers cells, because many patients are older and can’t go through multiple rounds of chemo if a cancer relapses.

“What our hope is on a long-term basis is that patients (with leukemia and lymphoma) can take drugs to live a normal life span like HIV patients do today,” she said.

Infinity’s stock was the state’s biggest gainer in 2012, and not just among biotechs; largely on the strength of IPI-145, the company’s stock quadrupled in value over the course of the year, rising from around $6 a share to over $25. With just under 200 employees, Infinity today has a market capitalization of $1.2 billion.

Industries:

Comments

If you are commenting using a Facebook account, your profile information may be displayed with your comment depending on your privacy settings. By leaving the 'Post to Facebook' box selected, your comment will be published to your Facebook profile in addition to the space below.